My Thoughts on Lilly Pulitzer at Target #LillyforTarget

So what are your thoughts on this whole #LillyForTarget thing? Personally – when I first heard that Lilly Pulitzer was going to have a limited collection at Target I was so excited. I grew up with Lilly Pulitzer clothing around me – I personally never had any, because it was WAY too expensive, but living in a resort/beach area – it was a tourist favorite.

After hearing about it at Target, I then heard nothing for quite some time – but then April 19th date popped up and I set a reminder on my calendar to get to the store when it opened.

The Shopping Experience

April 18th came around and I got online in the evening, while I was doing some work and saw that some items were starting to become available on the mobile site. I jumped onto my phone, signed in with my Target RedCard and ordered a bathing suit, shirt and outfit for Lennox – 4 things, nothing major!

It was time for bed, so I didn’t wait for anything else. I had planned on getting up in the morning and heading to the store a FEW MINUTES before Target opened at 8am. I got to the store around 7:40 and saw there were already ~50 people in line. I went and stood in line with them – it was very calm, orderly and everyone was a little embarrassed to be standing in line for clothes but it was all in good fun. It was a lot of parents w/ their teenage daughter or mom’s of little girls. By the time we entered the store – there were probably ~150 people there.

The employees of Target were very friendly, joked around with us that they had the whole collection and that it looked great on HIM! We laughed, we got in line and understood that there was no running, no pushing, and no entering the store until the main lights came on.

The lights came on, everyone entered through the 2 doors and headed to the sections of Lilly Pulitzer items. This is where it started to get a little “crazy” but still NOTHING like “Black Friday Crazy”. People walked quickly (remember, no running!) to their section and grabbing what they wanted. I personally walked to the girls section, they had what I wanted – grabbed up the size I needed in a dress and a jumper. I then, grabbed a cell phone case in the accessories department and went to the toddler section to find 1 more dress I was looking for. I lastly headed to the woman’s department but it was already bare. Oh well – I personally wasn’t looking for too much for myself! On my way out I saw A LOT of people with very full carts – one lady even had about 10 beach bags… one lady was confronting her about it – but I walked away.

Those people who get 10 of one item, or 1 item in 5 sizes, those are the people who drive me crazy. If you are getting a few dresses or outfits for yourself or children, I don’t have a problem with that – but lets not buy EVERYTHING on the rack. And let’s REALLY not buy everything to just re-sell. Maybe in the future Target should limit the number of items you can buy, so that they don’t sell out AS fast – but honestly, those people will still find a way to get it all. It would still be sold out in a day, just maybe a few hours versus a few minutes.

Spread the love people, SPREAD THE LOVE!

What I think about all of this…

So what do I think about the whole thing? If you check out Target Style on Facebook, people are PISSED OFF! Yes, they had website trouble, like EVERY big event and Black Friday shopping site that goes live at a certain time to a large audience – we should not be surprised by this anymore. I think the thing that I’m even more confused by is why people are so mad at the fact that they are already sold out – there were thousands of people in store shopping today, thousands online shopping last night when the site finally went live. Of course they are going to sell out fast! Maybe I’m being naive, but I went into this assuming that it would be similar to all their other designer collections – only available for a few hours, probably only 1 (possibly 2) shipments and that would be it. If you went into this thinking it was something that was in stock over and over again, I think you were sadly mistaken. It is amazing to see how much they probably spent on airtime for tv commercials – but at the same time, it worked right? The whole product line is sold out, they got a ton of shoppers in their stores, and Lilly Pulitzer will now have some new customers that had never heard or tried Lilly before. To me, that sounds like a good marketing “stunt” if you will.

What do you think? Am I being unrealistic with my thoughts?

Speaking of LOVE – Lennox LOVED her new #LillyforTarget outfits! Each summer she usually has a Lilly Pulitzer dress that I find on Consignment at Just Between Friends Fort Worth, but since we were in Europe during the sale – I didn’t get one. Now she has some cute outfits for the summer and our trip to Cape Cod later this year!